


The Ex

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 11:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18314360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: The following story was inspired by, but is not a comment on "Waiting Room", by OldDVS. Please, understand. I enjoyed (and am going to Kudo) that story. This is not a critique or an argument. Instead it's a case of reading something, and thinking, "I wonder what would happen if this had been the case, instead of that?" So you write the story to find out. In this case, the question was, "What if, instead of being a whirling bitch, Greg's ex was a really nice, smart person--a "Donna from Chiswick" smart person with brains the size of a planet and no one much to share that with?" That idea clicked with numerous comments Rupert Graves has made about Greg's admiration of and envy of Sherlock--yes, the freedom of being not a pro, and breaking rules, but also the sheer brilliance that leaps forward where Greg can only go at the steady hunting pace of a bloodhound.So, this is a story about why Greg's marriage failed...and what that might mean to Mycroft.





	The Ex

Mycroft knew her, of course. He had a lifetime of snapshots, from her first baby pictures (acquired, quietly, by a woman who had not been the plumber she presented herself as—though she fixed the garbage disposal a treat…), to the post-divorce photos of an empty-faced woman staring out the window of her school’s teacher’s lounge on a rainy day—a photo that might as well have been in black and white for all the good the color did. Bleak.

She was not “pretty.” Mycroft could see how she might be attractive, though, if you liked a desperate, profoundly female woman: large breasted, full-bodied, curve on curve showing even through a barely managed layer of weight, face like a forlorn pansy, big-eyed and dark.

She and Greg would have made sexy children, had they been able. Not necessarily “pretty,” but they’d have been able to pull on a Friday night, no matter whether they were male or female, young or old, rich or poor.

Her name was Donna. She sat, now, in the hospital waiting room, as did Mycroft. She worried about Greg and the outcome of his surgery—as did Mycroft.

He wondered how she’d heard. Probably the grapevine, he thought. Or someone at the Met hadn’t registered that she was no longer Greg’s spouse. Or Greg had failed to catch some secondary bit of paperwork to get it into the system. Or one of his coworkers had felt she needed to know regardless of the divorce. Or…

Too many variables. Too many perfectly reasonable options. She was his ex. That provided enough reasons.

“Have you been here long,” he asked, seating himself carefully in one of the solid, blocky chairs that lined the waiting lounge.

Her eyes flicked to him. Dark, but not brown. Not that rare deep blue you found only occasionally, either, that seemed like midnight. No—a deep hazel, flecked with gold and green and tawny brown. Her eyes contained a wild-wood. Her lips, as sculpted as Sherlock’s, twitched back pain.

“’Bout ‘alf-hour.” It was the same London Estuary as Greg’s. A modern Henry Higgins could probably have deduced it to a street. Mycroft, less profoundly fascinated with dialect, could still draw a circle on a map, and name five schools whose students would speak with that exact cadence. Or would have spoken in it forty years ago—the new, upcoming generation always spoke in its own narrow dialect, as distinct as fingerprints if you knew what to listen for. Mycroft didn’t—again, he was not sufficiently intrigued. He had other interests.

Half an hour, then. Sitting alone, swinging that one foot in a nervous kick, her hand pinning the skirt of her rayon dress to her knee.

“Any word of how he’s doing?” Mycroft muffled the concern. No one knew yet that he and Lestrade…cared. About each other.

Well—Anthea might guess. Sherlock would deduce it quickly, at some time in his life when he was seeing either Mycroft or Greg more often than his current life allowed. He spent most of his time these days with John, and Rosie, or with private clients, though, and saw less of his two former sources of case work: friend and brother left behind as life swept him along on new currents.

“Nothing much.” She gave a crooked smile. “I’m not family. Not anymore. Not used to that, but they won’t tell me much. Hard not to be scared.”

“Not anymore?” Of course he knew the answer, but…

He cared. About Greg. And the truth was he’d always shivered away from knowing too much about this woman. It had been bad enough to quickly skim the reports of her infidelities, the repeated rounds of counselling followed by sudden, passionate adultery. He’d avoided learning more, for fear of finding out that Greg really was that inadequate, or she was really that cruel—or that he himself was that achingly jealous.

He was a brilliant man, and he knew when ignorance was the better path. Learning too much about Donna Lestrade and her marital relations with Greg would have been a direct express route down an interpersonal rabbit hole he could not afford to dart into.

“I could find out more,” he said, and to cover his personal investment, added, “Civil Service. It’s not often good for much, but I can almost certainly arrange to hear more than…” he lifted a dissembling, ironic brow. “Than what?”

She met his gaze, dispassionate, empty. Not even sullen. As though if you dropped a penny she’d echo and echo and echo, and then the drums would start in the deep, like in Fellowship of the Ring, when Fool-of-a-Took Pippin set off the disaster of Khazad-dum. Drums in the deep.

It struck him with profound unease that perhaps this woman did have depths. He had not considered it.

“I’m the ex,” she said, her voice simple and restrained. One corner of her mouth flipped up. “I believe Greg’s friends generally refer to me as ‘the bitch.’”

“Ah.”

He’d thought it often enough.

Was fidelity too much to ask for, after all?

She looked away, still reserved, still distant, still a sad-faced pansy. Not looking at him, she said, quietly, “Anything you can learn would be welcome.”

“Why do you care? You can’t say you’re still in love with him.” The worlds escaped all his strict resolve.

She looked back, and then said, quietly, “Bugger off. You don’t know damn-all.” The words burned on the air. If was only a metaphor—and, yet…

Mycroft could imagine the jet fuel vapors hanging in the air, the flick of a lighter, the explosion of heat and flame…

So much hurt. So much sorrow. So much rage.

So much love.

He had not wanted to know that. He’d wanted to believe she’d hurt Greg for lack of love. At least for lack of passion. Lack of something. Morals? Commitment?

Her reaction suggested that whatever she’d lacked, it was not something she had wanted to lack, or failed to struggle to provide.

No. He had not wanted to know that.

He looked away himself, pulling his smart phone out of his breast pocket, taking off his right black glove so he could prod the screen. Moments later the little machine pinged back with the notes he reserved for Anthea’s texts.

“They’ve repaired the damage to his gut. They’re closing, now. But he’s taken quite a lot of damage, and…it was a gut wound. It could be days before they’re really sure he’s not going to die from sepsis.”

He checked himself, horrified by the bitterness in his own voice. The fear.

He didn’t look at the woman on the other side of the waiting lounge, but he heard her stir, suddenly aware of him in a different way than previously.

“Ah,” she said, a near murmur. “You're smart. He’s a heart-breaker for sure, in’t he?”

A full second escaped, Mycroft frozen, staring at the screen of his phone. Then, briefly, abruptly, he nodded, short and fierce.

“It was just supposed to be a pick-up. The prisoner was already supposed to be controlled. They’d missed one of the gang, though. A boy. Hiding. With a knife.”

She made a small, pained sound of her own, like a wounded dog—a good dog, a dog who wanted to do it all right, who didn’t want to make a fuss, but, oh, a *hurt* dog…

She’d have sat in these chairs before.

She’d have sat at home, or at work, imagining those chairs, imagining that wound, imagining that kid, imagining that knife. Cop’s wife.

Cop’s wife. She’d been a cop’s wife, and loyal in her way. She’d slept around. But Mycroft realized he could recall no report of her ever failing to come to the hospital, or to attend an award ceremony for her husband, or show up for a Met event. He forced himself to look up at her, and forced his kinder self to show.

“They’ve repaired the damage. And we have better medicine now than a hundred years ago. He should be fine.”

She nodded. Those wild, forest-hazel eyes studied him.

“He does love us smart ones. Or—maybe he just appeals to us and we can’t help ourselves. I still don’t know.”

He blinked.

“What?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Greg. Somehow it’s never the dumb ones for him. Not as friends. Not on his team. Not his lovers. Look at ‘im, with that Sherlock ‘Olmes.” Her voice was fond, amused, indulgent. “Razor-tongued bastard with an addiction riding him like a jockey, too smart for his own good, ego the size of Mainland China. But Greg put up wi’ ‘im. Still puts up wi’ ‘im, though last I heard the bastard had near lost Greg his job at one point there, back when they thought ‘e’d killed some kids and then jumped. But back he comes, and there’s Greg, ready to saddle up and ride again. And so far as I know there’s nothing between those two but the crimes. The puzzles. Still it’s that intense. He loves the smart ones…and it’s almost enough.”

Mycroft blinked, frowned, and, unable to resist, said, “Almost? What do you mean, almost?” And, oh, God, that was not his “minor position in government’ voice, it was his ‘When I say frog—hop it!’ voice. The voice of the British Government incarnate.

Her brows flicked up in surprise, and back. She gave a small laugh. “Oh, Lord. You poor bastard. You hadn’t seen it, had you? We’re his crack. Sherlock takes drugs. Greg…finds smart people. Runs with us as far as we’ll let him. Hungers for us. Damn near worships us. And then—he can’t keep up. Or he has a day when worship or no worship he’s got nothing but annoyance for our freakish little obsessions. Or we get…”

“What?”

She looked at her fingers, knotted into the rayon over her knee, pulling the light fabric out of shape.

“Bored,” she said, softly. “Bored. He likes to…watch. Watch us be clever. Watch us perform. Watch how smart we are. But he’s never learned to go along and share it properly. It’s not just that he can’t keep up. That weird little doctor who feeds Sherlock ‘Olmes’ ego can’t keep up, but he can play along, ask the right questions, maintain the interest levels, be *fascinated,* understand it when it’s all laid out for him. Greg…” She sighed. “Not so much. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t really like to feel talked down to. And he’s got a hard job of his own. Comes home tired. Wants to watch a game on the telly and not work at it. But…there you are, you’ve been talking all day long to angry teenagers and…and…and *goldfish* all day. You’d like to play a bit, talk about something and get excited. Tried talking footie stats wi’ him one night, until he told me to for God’s sake just shut up and let ‘im watch ‘is game.”

If he had not been Mycroft Holmes he could have missed her point, or denied it, or failed to see the implications, or how it fit into all he knew about Greg Lestrade: a good man. Good at being a man. More than a goldfish. Less than…

Less than a genius. A worshipper of genius, instead.

“He’s a good man,” she said, not knowing she was only saying what Mycroft was thinking. Her voice didn’t make it a hopeful statement. “He’s good. Kind. Honorable. He tries. But—he doesn’t understand himself on that. And sometimes, there you are. Alone, with no one to talk to but the man three feet away who’s jealous of you, jealous over you, jealous over your mind, possessive. Hungry. Lonely.”

And sometimes, Mycroft thought, empty sex and an adoring goldfish is a temptation to a woman alone with a not-quite-goldfish. A big golden retriever of a phys-ed teacher. A handsome chancer met at a bar. A night of not having to think, and not having to think about thinking, and not having to think about what your not-genius husband is thinking about thinking. Just go out, have a nice drink, fuck a willing partner, cry a bit—and go home and try again.

For almost all his life the first and best job open to the majority of “smart” women was teaching.

The smartest professional women most East End coppers would meet would be teachers, and nurses, and accountants. The clever women. The women who made something of themselves.

Donna.

He looked at her with renewed attention, and saw it all: the focused alertness, the level of self-awareness, the aching loneliness.

“You still love him,” he said, with regret and shame, and more than a bit of green-eyed resentment.

She shook her head. “Not—“ She tried again. “I never should have let myself try it with him in the first place. Not without facing what he wants and can’t quite do. I told myself it was enough, that he loved me for my mind.” And oh, the bitterness in that statement! The faint, aching laughter under her breath. The self-deprecating humor. “What I didn’t take into account was all the times he’d resent me for having it—having it when he did want it, and having it when he was tired, or feeling happily Pooh-ish and ‘bear of very little brain’ in a happy way, and I’d be just too damned much.”

“Ah. I see.”

She met his eyes, knowingly. “Do you?”

“I—think so.” He looked away. “I’m not sure I can learn from your hard-won wisdom, though.”

“You love him, too?”

A body twitch passing as a shrug. “I’ve come to believe I do.”

She nodded. “Gotcha.”

They were silent together.

The ping of Anthea’s text rang again.

“He’s in intensive care, but he’s stable, they have him on antibiotics just in case there’s sepsis, and he’s recovering well.”

She nodded. “And there’s no way they’re going to allow an ex-wife to see him tonight.” She stood and smoothed her flowing skirts down, around her thighs and upper calves. She was, he thought again, not pretty, but sensual. Feminine. Desirable.

Yes, he could see how Greg had wanted this one—wanted her enough to keep trying so long.

And he could see how Greg had hurt her enough to drive her away, over and over again, looking for a simple, painless night of successful sex with a simple, sexy gold-fish.

“He’s more than an ordinary,” she said to him, meeting his eyes. “He’d be easier if he were stupid. But he’s not. He’s just not—He’s just not one of us. Is he?”

“No. He’s not.”

She nodded. “If you stay with him, be ready for that. Have answers. I didn’t.”

“No other ‘smart ones’ in your circle?”

“No. We’re spread thin on the ground.”

“So we are.” He considered, then rose, too, and pulled two cards from one pocket of his wallet. “This is my private number. If you ever just need to talk—I’m here. And this…” He handed her the second with a meaningful glance. “We always have places for analysts. For the ‘smart ones.’ I find it’s easier to endure when you’ve got at least a few people around who are almost as smart as you are. Your mind gets a good daily workout, you feel less alone. When you do get home—well, sometimes the football is enough, even without statistics to enliven the conversation.”

She risked a crooked smile—but he noted how carefully she stored the two cards. “Thanks,” she said. “Will you be sure to let me know if he’s all right?” She slipped out a card of her own, and jotted an email address that didn’t match the main one on the card, then handed it to him. “I’m just the ex, and so help me I don’t want to change that. But it was never about not caring about him. Let me know if he needs—more than just you. He’s a good, good man.”

Mycroft nodded, and watched as she went away.

It was not a good night, he thought. It was hard, and scary, and lonely, and far too full of burning revelations. But he was the British Government. The Iceman. Antarctica. He dealt with truth—and whatever the evening had been otherwise, it had been full of new truth.

When he left, he left wiser, more afraid—and more resolved. If you love a man who’s not quite a goldfish (perhaps a vast koi, moving in the shadows of a lake, too big and wise to be stupid, too stupid to be wise) then you must be ready for all the days a fish is just a fish—and yet, can long to be something more.

o  O  o

Quote, Rupert Graves, regarding Lestrade’s attitude toward Sherlock: “Lestrade has a double reaction to Sherlock. He’s obviously phenomenally impressed and marvels at his super brain, and at the same time jealous that Sherlock is infinitely better at his job than he is.”  
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/sherlocks4/graves>

 


End file.
